Monday, January 16, 2012

Jack's Point Sprint Triathlon Race Report

Alrighty, here's the ugly race report from the 2nd race in the Ultimate Tri Series. The race is an early afternoon start, at 1pm, so after a late breakfast back home, we made the drive to Jack's Point, 10k south of Queenstown. It was a cooler day, with the winds blowing 50-60km/hr. Not gale force, but definitely not fun.

Swim:
I warmed up a wee bit with some sprints, some good form swimming, some flopping around and some smack-talking with friends also doing the race. There were maybe 100 of us doing the sprint triathlon? Good fun. The course was supposed to be a 500m out-and-back in the very small Lake Tewa but the race director decided to change it to approximately a 750m swim out and around a small island and back in. I swam. In the last few minutes of the swim I realized myself and one other guy were the only ones rightbehind the front pack of approximately 10. We tried to catch them but exited the water maybe 4-5" back. Turns out I was first woman out of the water, in about 11:35 (1:32/100m, or 1:24/100yds). Not sure where all the fast girls went, as there are usually some 10:xx swimmers out there, but cool enough, I'll take 1st chick!!

T1: I do not have short-course transition efficiency, but I also don't dawdle. Got the wetsuit off, got everything else on, and I was off. Right out of transition we ride over about 200m of grass to get onto the road. No, I don't know how to slip into shoes already clipped in.

Bike:
Onto the bike course and it is a 2x10km loop on meandering roads all within the Jack's Point community, on the golf course estate. Read: you're either going up, or down, on poorly chip-sealed roads with gravel everywhere. That wouldn't be so bad, but we had strong winds and it started to rain/hail. I was warm enough, I just needed to focus. Despite leap frogging back and forth with the girls for first, second and third place (I think), I got my dose of bad luck. Going into a downhill curve, my back tire got completely shredded, the back wheel locked and I skid and slipped all over the gravelly road until I finally had the luxury of scraping the entire right side of my body against the ground to slow me down as I slammed into a rock wall. Not. Fun. A lady kindly stopped her entire race for me, helped me stay calm and held her own clothing against my oozing wound until a golf cart came to rescue me. I was taken back to transition, then to a nearby home where a nurse helped me out. She did what she could, and then we had to go to the medical centre because it needed a thorough scrubbing out. After waiting a long while, a nurse scrubbed out my wounds for what felt like absolute FOREVER. I was near passing out, vomiting from the pain. I don't exaggerate pain, when I've had 2 broken legs, a knee surgery, many stitches, and of course gone through the pain of racing Ironman, which can at times get really, really ugly. But this was brutal. Sheer agony. And it seemed to never end. Just when I thought she was done, the doctor would return and point out another area that needed even further cleaning. I'm not good with laughing gas as I don't respond well to it, nor does my stomach take codeine well, so all I had was a local anesthetic and paracetamol/ibuprofen from 4 hours prior.

Before being cleaned.

After the scrub out. It then had to get pulled together andsteri-striped. No stitches needed.

The wee scrapes on my arm. Triceps, lats and other upperbody muscles are quite strained, but are getting better witheach passing day.

So that's where I'm at. I'm not doing anything this week other than continuing to ice, taking pain killers and anti-inflammatories regularly, and... hoping that on race day I'll be somewhat effective at mimicking the swim, bike, run motions.